Dear All,
Having recently gotten around to putting my car back on her wheels (more on this in my project thread, soon), I have noticed a potential problem with my front suspension. I seem to have differing spring rates on either side of the vehicle.
Just some background. The vehicle is partially stripped, so currently consists of suspension and glass only; no engine or anything too heavy. It has been fitted with a brand new pair of Sachs shock absorbers purchased from Euro Car Parts. I stripped the struts and painted up everything, before re-assembling it all, and re-fitting it to the car.
Having now dropped the vehicle back onto it's wheels, I decided to test the shock absorber response by pushing down sharply on the front corners. There is a dramatic difference between the responses of the two sides. The passenger side shock gives what I believe to be a fairly normal response, depressing and returning to position in a damped fashion. The drivers side however is very much stiffer. I can barely depress it with my bodyweight, and it returns much more swiftly.
Now I realise that the engine is heavier on the drivers side, so the shock could be differentially pressured to compensate, but the difference is more than I would have expected. Therefore, do I have a problem here, or is it simply because I am testing the response with the engine out and the car incorrectly weighted?
I have checked the struts, and can't see any assembly error on my part (although I certainly wouldn't rule it out!) I have checked that the spring support plates are correctly positioned, so the springs aren't loaded differently. Obviously I don't want to go stripping down the struts and sending the shocks back to euro car parts unless I really have to, as this is a massive job!
Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Kind regards,
Mike